Mmm, what's that smell: Coffee or sweat? How to avoid a crap IT job Do not try picking up a girl with the line: “You’re not as fat as my current girlfriend; if you sleep with me I’ll drop her as soon as she’s finished painting our bedroom.” Trust me on this, it doesn’t work. It should set off alarm bells in anyone's head. Yet during job interviews, hopefuls are told things like: “We’re …
Personnel Departments used to do useful stuff: the administration connected with employment, employment law, pensions, and all that stuff. Sometimes they'd let you cry on their shoulder without reporting it all to the person you were complaining about.
Personnel is a function, not a power base. HR is for people who want power without doing anything to deserve it.
However, turning down a bad job as a contractor is not a luxury, it is a survival trait. It has to be. Bad jobs can cost as much or more and can kill your business/reputation due to the stresses of simply dealing with people (management) that wants something for nothing. Better to pursue other opportunities and make better use of your limited time.
That they no longer provide coffee at all, in fact they contract out the running of coffee shops in their offices, so employees can buy coffee from them.
Not only did the bean counters realise they could save a few quid by cutting the coffee supply, they realised they could make a profit from selling it back.
Is there any upside to working at IBM? Err, yeah. Quite a few. Minor office perks like coffee are not in the list though.
There are a whole load of world-class software people there, and working with them you can learn a lot. Management in general may not be interested in their input to the business (rightly or wrongly), but as a developer there are far worse places to gain useful experience. It's not exciting like some startup might be, you won't get to jump on the latest tech bandwagons every week, but you will learn good practice. There's also the possibility of picking a country you like the look of and deciding to go and work there, as they are everywhere. Pay is competitive (though not exceptional), and if you're the sort of person who wants to find a quiet corner to sit out the rest of their career in you can probably do that too. It is riddled with the sort of problems only a company of that size can experience (e.g. drowning in 'process'), and it can be pretty boring.. but all in all it's a pretty good place to work.
My last company was borged by big blue. They threatened our complimentary tea and coffees, it was actually one of the stipulations on the takeover contract that they had to keep them. However they in turn stipulated that if we ever moved to a bigger office, this would no longer be available.
Otherwise, there were world-class software (and hardware) people, most of whom wont want anything to do with newbies to the company. I never heard from my "mentor". You will be stuck with the same people as before - good and bad.
The way up the ladder and getting a good PBC is by chasing emails CCing the right people, regardless of actual results.
Pay is at the lower end of market rates, topped up by retention bonuses to stop people escaping.
Pension is good mind, it would be a nice place to work out your last decade or two of work. And I do know people who took the option of transferring abroad.
I was a developer at a financial services co, several small software outfits running on VC money, and I was a system architect at an oil major. I am now a developer at IBM and I have to say that the salary/stress ratio at IBM is the lowest in the industry by some margin. I know several people who started in IBM then moved away, but nearly all see it now as "the grass being greener".
While IBM feels way to process-heavy when you're part of it, I reckon it protects you from the alternative seen at far too many shops, ie requiring staff to be in at weekends/hoildays to make up for bad/missing decisions that should have been fixed earlier.
As others have said, you get to work on key strategic products, sometimes all over the world, and with industry experts.
While the perks (esp compared to the oil major) are pretty pathetic, the salary is OK and (here in the EU) they leave staff "resource actions" as a last resort.
I can understand there are many who have experienced IBM and not enjoyed it. There is something very exciting about being part of a small start-up. But if it is a balance of stability and quality you want, I reckon IBM is top.
I'm only on my first proper employment here(before that it was student work) but it has been 5 years. But I can agree with the comments in there. I've had quite a few job interviews and I can agree with the article. And yes I have always considered a job to be a job... I'm not making a carrer. My managers face this year when for the third year in a row yearly reviews came up and me telling her that my job is that things keep running and that if they weren't it'd be noticed much much sooner then the yearly review was priceless. But she actually considered the idea and agreed to it. So now it's just a 5 minute talk instead of input stuff into review form and let me know when you're done.
I'm in a situation I shouldn't be in; I had some nagging doubts about the job when the hiring manager wasn't available for the interview and had a couple of his staff do it. However, after having checked a load of details it did seem that I was being unfair.
Boy, was that a wrong assumption.
Now I have to say that I am being paid and they are also covering my expenses. But the reality is that what I was told the job involved has proven to be complete bollocks.
I am sat twiddling my thumbs as I have no authority and I spend most of my week looking at server logs to make it look as if I am actually doing some work. I was told that I would have staff; no. I was told that I would be able to make significant changes; no. I was told that their IT was shit and needed to be dragged into the 21st century; that's true, but I'm not allowed to make any changes.
I'm seriously frustrated and now it appears that because they have had a bad year for sales, they will be laying people off. I haven't been told yet, but will probably get the info at the end of the month.
The moral of this tale; trust your gut feelings. If something doesn't seem right, then it probably isn't
".......the reality is that what I was told the job involved has proven to be complete bollocks....." In all my years, both as permie and contractor, I have only had one job description that was actually accurate to the role. The rest were often only 50% accurate at best, and one was so far off I actually asked if HR had attached the wrong job description to a different vacancy!
Same here..
I've started a new job, and my 'manager' is a complete fuckwit.
I find it impossible to have a technical discussion with her, to the point where a 2.4GHz WiFi spec she planned to 'roll out' - was inadequate, as it only consisted of b/g... no N, and no 5GHz.
I have control over lots of goodies, SAN's, racks of virtual machines, spanning multiple offices - Yet everything has to be channeled through my 'manager' before anything can be actioned. I'm unable to make decisions without first checking - I considered asking if it's okay to wipe my arse t'other day...
This is just one small example. I left my previous job from doing 65 hour weeks, week after week. My previous boss has just called me and offered my old post back, but with a 70% pay increase for a 37 hour week amongst other benefits. Rest assured I won't be continuing after my '3 month probationary period'.
"My previous boss has just called me and offered my old post back, but with a 70% pay increase for a 37 hour week amongst other benefits. Rest assured I won't be continuing after my '3 month probationary period'."
Which sound great.
*if* he keeps his word.
Better check the small print on the new contract *very* carefully.
Too bad this doesn't work that well in less civilized countries, such as Czech Republic. When someone turns a job offer down here, the chance of getting another one lowers significantly. As if actually getting a job without an inside help wasn't hard enough, heh. Also, out of the 25-ish interviews I've been to, they offered a coffee on two or three. Oh well.
"....Human resources is an audit function. They like proof by example, and are generally pretty easy going...." Maybe in good times, when the company beancounters aren't looking to trim the back-office count. HR can be very stressed in a downturn as they know they are not popular in the company and there will be no tears if they are given the boot. They know their jobs are continually under the threat of being outsourced to agencies and they know they will often and unfairly get the blame if some danger to the company slips through the interview process. Do not assume the HR drone will be a push-over, they may be looking to protect their job by "exposing" any white-lies on your CV. Do look for stress between any technical interviewer present and the HR drones as it's a good sign of an unhappy work environment.
Also do not assume an HR drone does not know your tech - after interviewing fifteen similar candidates, you'll be surprised at how quickly they latch onto the one question that makes all the interview candidates pause for thought. But the best advice here is DON'T LIE! If you do not know the answer, ask a few qualifying questions to show you are not clueless, but DO NOT LIE or BULLSH*T them, because if they pick up on it they will immediately assume all your other technical answers are cobblers.
The chair thing made me laugh.
A colleague and I once found a pair of old leather chairs languishing in a store cupboard. As they were considerably nicer and more comfortable than the ones we had, we dusted them off and put them to good use - supporting our tired arses.
That lasted about a week, until the HR lady came round and informed us in rather embarrassed tones that we weren't allowed to use them because they were "director's chairs".
As there weren't actually any directors that needed to sit on these lovely chairs, they were just stashed back in the cupboard again. There they quietly rotted away until they were eventually thrown out in an office refurbishment program.
".....A colleague and I once found a pair of old leather chairs languishing in a store cupboard...." BOFH 101 - as soon as you hear a rumour about company departments being consolidated, start looking for the excess kit being ordered in ADVANCE of the consolidation, and get your slice by whatever (blackmail) means you can! I can guarantee someone will be taking advantage of the consolidation to stash extra kit somewhere. Make sure you get the permission to take said kit home for your "home office" before anyone realises it's the director-spec laptop, desktop colour laser printer, 32-inch TV-cum-monitor, leather chair, etc., etc. You may need to bribe a manager with some kit of their own in such a "reassignment" deal. If need be, claim that you have backache and require the extra lumbar support only to be found in said director's chair. Do not keep the kit in your office as you can be sure someone of authority will want to take it from you (and take it home for their home office). If your company still does company cars then wander down to the Car Lease Desk and offer to "help them" with the excess executive cars which will typically have just enough left on their lease that the company would rather keep them for six more months than pay a penalty and return them. Remember, your pay and conditions should always be treated as the minimum.
/Posted from the comfort of my lumbar-supporting, Italian leather, ex-director's chair......
Pretty sure that would be my clue to get the hell out of such a dysfunctional place.
If someone has time to be the chair police, and actually believes that that is a useful function, then the company has become so ridiculously rules bound that it's not worth staying.
Obviously in an ideal world, where jobs are easy to come by. But they are in the tech sector aren't they? Only last month I turned down about a dozen interviews for perm jobs, and that wasn't even in London.
"Pretty sure that would be my clue to get the hell out of such a dysfunctional place."
Yes, I would have agreed with you at the time but I stuck it out and, believe it or not, things actually got better. Here I am some years later, sitting on a Herman Miller Aeron chair. Very lovely it is too.
As some other commentators have mentioned, all companies have their issues. Sometimes you have to just look at the big picture.
I remember a similar story from Norwich Union (now Aviva (not the woolly jumper shop) ).
Someone went on holiday to find their chair had been permanently "borrowed", but their replacement didn't have the clip-on plastic arm-rests. The reason? They are now for senior manager level and above...
Its like those magazines where you collect an piece of the model steam train each week, except here you're collecting bits of the chair you need to sit on each time you get a promotion.
The fact they were measuring peoples worth in management skills and nothing else speaks volumes on its own.
I worked for a foreign-owned company that had a regular rotation of of ex-pat seniors. Most of these were highly competent, and headed for the board room the home-country MNC, but there were exceptions. One of these did a chair audit. Luckily, I just qualified for the one I'd been sitting in for several years, but one of the senior managers (also an expat) was told that his chair was not senior enough for his job title.
Despite protestations of comfort, he was not permitted to remain in such a lowly chair!
After the usual "we are the greatest", "we take everything very seriously"," come work for us" drivel that the interviewee spouted at me, we went for a quick tour of the offices.
I asked if I could see the server room, wooooowwwwww.... There was carpet on the floor, no, not antistatic carpet or special office carpet, just the normal synthetic "static producing" carpet and the servers were held not in a rack, they just sat on the carpeted floor. I was afraid to move, I could just feel the static building up under my feet as we "shuffled" round the back of the machines.........
The interview didn't last long afterwards with this "Very Serious" company. Yes the walk round the office is definately important...
Now that sounds familiar!
Glad to say that the servers under my purview are now in racks. Although after consolidation and virtualisation they look a bit empty...
Unfortunately when you have been out of work for nearly a year the first offer, however much of a come down, is the one that keeps a roof over your head.
Damn right, I once had an interview arranged for 8am (neither of us could do a 9-6 slot) and after 30 minutes of waiting outside a locked building and numerous unanswered calls to the agent I left. Apparently the guy had slept through his alarm and turned up at 8:55 (the agent left me a message telling me to turn back as he was now "in the office"), needless to say I never went back.
"Apparently the guy had slept through his alarm and turned up at 8:55 "
It would be interesting to speculate wheather he'd be as forgiving if it was *you* who'd slept through your alarm.
But I'd suggest you do keep a note of his name just in case.
Just thought I'd make the point that I have been lucky enough, although it's probably more through poor attitude toward them and stand-on-their-own skills and experience, I have never successfully got a role through an agency. While I have come across a few individuals who seemed human the overriding feeling I got was that I was one of herd they cultivated to get to market in time for a big fat profit. I'm now old enough with hopefully enough direct contacts that if and when in the future I need a new role I don't even have to consider the option.
We may be wholly worthless pimps, but I take exception to being called a farmer...
At some point the Reg will let me write about the problems faced by recruiters, but I am not hopeful of getting much sympathy.
Direct contacts are of course good, but for most people they suffer from the fact that they correlate too much. By that I mean if your contacts are in one sector or just one technology, when the fan is hit they all are unable to help you at the same time.
"At some point the Reg will let me write about the problems faced by recruiters, but I am not hopeful of getting much sympathy."
I imagine it's a very hectic lifestyle. Surely that's why they never bother replying to emails/phone calls/death-threats, right?
"..... the problems faced by recruiters....." Yeah, Dom, that sound you hear is the World's smallest violin.
And I would also advise against accepting any requests from recruiters on LinkedIn, unlike a friend of mine that now gets spammed with dozens of jobs which are nothing to do with his field, from recruiters he has never even heard of!
There are two fundamental problems that agencies face:
The first is lack of respect, that's respect OF them (though some may argue they show little or no respect to prospects, but that's a different problem). Software is essentially a creative process. Like all creative industries, respect comes from the people around you being aware of your past work and giving you respect for those achievements. Recruiters come into the software world with no background, and no IT history. They don't have the vocabulary, although they speak fluent non-sequitur. Nor do they have the experience or knowledge to converse with softies as equals - yet they control our futures and our prospects. That is not a recipe for a successful relationship.
The second basic flaw is a lack of transparency. You send off your CV and wait .... and finally someone calls you, they dismiss your 5 years of SAP development in the City and ask if you want a second tier support job in Sheffield - debuggering Windows Server 2008 apps. There is no visible connection between what a prospect sends in and what opportunities pop out. Even worse is that this happens not just between the recruiter and the applicant but also between the recruiter and their client. The end result is frustration all round. Everyone has to deal with a world full of imperfect information. However, when it's clear that the person you are relying on as the gateway to ANY new position has a PhD in obsfucation there is no possibility to build trust - as past experience is that most interviews will be a fools errand.
As for being wholly worthless. I think you're selling yourself a bit short. Even a pimp has some scrap value.
"At some point the Reg will let me write about the problems faced by recruiters, but I am not hopeful of getting much sympathy."
I very much look forward to hear what problems recruiters face. I also doubt you will garner much sympathy. Probably due to the fact that the recruitment industry, in relation to IT roles, appears to be woefully inadequate and you are addressing a largely technical audience who suffer at the hands of these recruiters.
Could you also explain why all they ever seem to do is match keywords without context? I once wrote a game for a set top box - it ran in the web browser on the STB. I have also administered linux servers. Both are mentioned on my CV and every once in a while I get emails from recruiters looking for a firmware developer for linux based set top boxes half way across the country.
At some point the Reg will let me write about the problems faced by recruiters, <-- Now I would actually be interested in reading this. I suspect in some cases candidates are their own worst enemies, at least if I knew the problems an agent faced I could tailor my approach to help them satisfy their goals as well. Which means more chance of my CV ending up on the desk of someone. That and it would be amusing to hear how half the clients want the skills of to launch the space shuttle for the minimum wage in Kirkwall.
I got an interview for a good job through a bad agency, but this did mean we had to devote a section of the interview to correcting what the recruiter had said about each of us ("errrrm, that's not true", "I don't know why she said that", "I haven't done that, but I have...")
"I got an interview for a good job through a bad agency, but this did mean we had to devote a section of the interview to correcting what the recruiter had said about each of us ("errrrm, that's not true", "I don't know why she said that", "I haven't done that, but I have...")"
Isn't that fun? Many years ago I went for an interview where the agent got what the company did wrong, but they turned out to be really nice and the job was great from just about every perspective (even if it wasn't the one I'd been "briefed" about). It was a crying shame when they got taken over by a much bigger rival and everything went to shit. I was long gone by then, mind, 'cause I followed the people who'd made it such a great place to work out the door...
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